Mylan Must Face Narrowed EpiPen Class-Action Suit, Judge Rules

(Bloomberg) -- Mylan NV still has to fight a class-action suit over its EpiPen allergy treatment, though a judge narrowed its scope on Friday, throwing out allegations that the company made misleading statements, didn’t disclose its regulatory risks and fixed prices for some generic drugs.

Claims that the EpiPen rebate scheme violated antitrust rules remain. The lawsuit “adequately alleges both harm to competition in the relevant market, and the predominance of anticompetitive effects,” U.S. District Judge J. Paul Oetken ruled. Plaintiffs claim the rebate program “blocked Sanofi from accessing a significant portion of the market for epinephrine autoinjectors.”

Representatives for Mylan didn’t immediately return a call for comment.

Key Insights:

• Allowing even a narrowed class action to proceed is bad news for Mylan, which has faced manufacturing problems, falling sales and is currently leading a strategic review of its business. Investors are starting to lose patience after Mylan missed revenue estimates in seven of the past eight quarters.
• While the decision narrows the scope of the litigation, Mylan must still face allegations that it used anticompetitive tactics to block the introduction of a competitor and artificially inflate the price of the product.
• The suit began in 2016, when investors sued over misleading statements about payments to government health-insurance programs. Oetken has already trimmed those claims among others in March 2018.

Get more:

• Read the ruling here.
• Mylan Accused of Misleading Investors About EpiPen Payments
• Mylan Drops Most in Three Years Despite Vow of Shift

To contact the reporters on this story: Chris Dolmetsch in Federal Court in Manhattan at cdolmetsch@bloomberg.net;Riley Griffin in New York at rgriffin42@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: David Glovin at dglovin@bloomberg.net, Heather Smith, Timothy Annett

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